Lauren Fensterstock is an artist and curator who currently resides in Portland, Maine. She has exhibited her artwork nationally including recent shows at the Bakalar Gallery at MassArt, , the Edward Bannister Gallery at Rhode Island College, The Center For Maine Contemporary Art, the Portland Museum of Art, The DUMBO Art Center in Brooklyn, NY, The John Michael Kohler Art Center; The Albany International Airport, and the Boston Center for the Arts. Her work is currently on view in the exhibition “The Thinking Body” at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art in Eugene, Oregon, and will be the subject of a major solo exhibition at The Bowdoin College Museum of Art in October of 2008, with an accompanying catalog.

Garden Pile , 2008 paper, charcoal, mixed media 15 X 18 X 9 inches

UNEARTHED was inspired by my fascination with an obscure tool called a Claude Glass. Allegedly developed by renowned painter Claude Lorain, this black convex mirror was used by artists to reflect landscapes. The dark color and curved surface of the glass reduced unnecessary detail and squeezed a complex view into a neat composition. The Claude Glass caught on just as the British were reshaping their landscape into the Picturesque style. Tourists strolling through the countryside in search of picture perfect views would use these mirrors to capture the image of nature as a momentary work of art. Ironically, as Thomas West noted, to reflect such a landscape, “the person using it ought to always turn his back to the object that he views.” On this, High Sykes Davis commented, “It is very typical of their attitude to nature that such a position should be desirable.”
        The picturesque movement represents man's desire to shape his world into a cultured vision of art and beauty. Here, landscape is manipulated to look like a painting; the earth becoming an expression of man's view of nature rather than man's true experience of nature. History, decay, and disorder are all potent tricks of the picturesque gardener, giving way to a knowingly melodramatic visual array. It is telling that we call these views scenery. Like a stage set, the picturesque garden was created as a site for the dramatic display of human experience.
          My work is crafted from paper and charcoal. The paper is formed using a historic technique called quilling and adapting its highly stylized visual effect. In contrast to this, the charcoal is a representation of the real earth- loose, messy, unshaped, formed through fire. Charcoal is known for its ability to absorb and purify the air around it. Here, the charcoal appears to obscure and destroy an image of ornamentation, while acting as a grounded and healing physical presence. -Lauren Fensterstock, 2008

Panoramic Claude Glass , 2008 paper, charcoal, mixed media 48 X 18 inches

Smudge , 2008 paper, charcoal, mixed media 20 X 22 X 9 inches

A Third Nature #3,4 and 5, 2008 Paper, charcoal, mixed media 8 X 8 X 3 inches each